


Sure as a bird flying high above

by beeawolf



Series: Damerons all the way down [4]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Recovery, porgs in the galley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 02:18:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14632026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeawolf/pseuds/beeawolf
Summary: "He used to balance on the highest branch he could get to and stretch his fingertipsup up upas far as they would reach, like he could lift himself through the thick canopy and into the stars just by sheer force of will."(The Falcon drifts, and Poe sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps.)





	Sure as a bird flying high above

**Author's Note:**

> Still new to a star war, still learning things, please forgive any transgressions. This follows [Light, more light](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14345490) and [Sleep Becalmed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14464203). It took too long to write and got too long. But here it is, now.

            He’d first seen the Millennium Falcon when he was a little kid; he’s got this blurry memory of watching it land, a much clearer one of watching it take off again. General Organa and General Solo had come to visit his parents – Poe had never asked why, still doesn’t know why. He remembers being shy with them at first, and then gradually he’d gotten braver and braver until finally he went and brought out his toy X-wing to show off.

            He remembers Han Solo picking it up and making it soar, adding some pretty great whooshing noises for good measure, and it all seems ridiculously surreal to Poe now that he actually knows who Han Solo _is_.

            Who he was.

            But the take-off. The take-off is what he remembers the most, because he’d scrambled up a tree to watch Han and Leia go. The Falcon had seemed so huge and shining and wonderful then, and he’d wanted to keep it in his sight as long as he possibly could.

            Later he used to imagine it out there sometimes when he was feeling down, would even climb up a tree again like he might be able to see it. Used to balance on the highest branch he could get to and stretch his fingertips _up up up_ as far as they would reach, like he could lift himself through the thick canopy and into the stars just by sheer force of will. Even into his teenage years, even when it started to feel a little silly, he’d still climb up and stare at the stars till his eyes hurt, imagining the Falcon soaring somewhere out of reach.

            And now he’s _here_ , and he’s hurting too much to stretch toward much of anything, and the Falcon isn’t soaring so much as drifting. No destination but onward, no mission besides _get away_.

            But – he’s here. He’s huddled in the ship’s derelict galley, surrounded by porgs and rare quiet, and he’s drifting in his own aimless way. It’s as though his body has seized hold of sleep and refuses to let it go now, afraid that it might never find its way there again.

            That didn’t used to be a problem. He used to just sort of gently collapse whenever he was tired, wherever he was tired.

             (Stretched on his back across a bench in the mess hall, flight suit half-off, waking up to Jessika Pava dropping a glob of pudding on his face. Leaning up against Black One after a good hour of repairs, keeping his eyes open just long enough to see BB-8 pluck the wrench from his own loosening grip. Sprawled across a mossy boulder on D’Qar, blinking awake only when the rain fell hard enough to sting his bare arms.

            Snap had actually come looking for him that last time, had seemed deeply annoyed to find Poe easing off the boulder and yawning.

             “Boss, are you kidding me? You know you have a bunk, right? Fancy commander’s quarters and everything?”

            “Too far away,” Poe had responded, drowsy and content with the cooling rain, wrapped up in the warm exhaustion of a successful mission, shielded from all ills by the words _Good work, Commander._

            Snap had huffed and grumbled about lazy leaders, then brushed the moss from Poe’s hair with a rough, affectionate swipe of his hand.)

            Sure, he’d had his nightmares. Everybody did. But if Poe ever woke up too restless he’d just wander out to Black One, climb in the cockpit, and curl into some ridiculous and spine-stabbing position for the rest of the night. Always a surefire cure. Even if he did have to invent some excuse for emerging from his ship at sunrise all wild-haired and bleary-eyed.

            (“Just checking the controls,” he’d told General Organa once, when she happened to walk by as he stumbled his way to the ground.

            “Really. So early?”

            “Never too early to start proper maintenance, ma’am.”

            “Right. And how are they?”

            “What?”

            “The controls, Dameron.”

            “Oh, good, they’re good. Still...” He’d waved his hand. “...controlling.”

            “Well, thank the Force for that.”)

            It’s just part of the job, that’s all. A side-effect of constant near-death experiences. The standard pilot nightmare, as far as Poe can tell, is crashing. Maybe followed by getting blown out of the sky or stuck outside the ship with no life support – that sort of thing. Most of it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, felt before. He and Jess used to compare dream crashes over breakfast sometimes.

            (“I was over some kind of ocean,” Pava said once. “And then out of _nowhere_ , boom!” A palm smack to the table, rattling both their trays. “The whole ship goes plunging down into the water. Like, the hell is up with that? I don’t even remember the last time I flew over an ocean.”

            Poe shrugged, and said, “Mine fell into a volcano.”

            Pava’s eyes narrowed. “You’re making that up.”

            “Seriously! Huge volcano. Lava spewing everywhere, my wings melting clean off and everything.”)

            Sometimes they’d debate whose dream-crash was worse for the whole damn meal, and it’d be easy and light and the next time he woke up gasping and flailing for the seat-eject that wasn’t there, he’d just think _Pava isn’t gonna believe this one_ , and end up smiling to himself in the dark.

            But he doesn’t really get the standard pilot nightmares anymore. Jakku burned those away, replaced them with these unfamiliar, blood-freezing things that inevitably have Poe waking up shivering so hard his teeth chatter, seeing things in the dark. They’re the sort of nightmares that even a nap in an X-wing won’t cure (he’s tried).

            And they’re definitely the sort of nightmares you can’t bring up at breakfast, not if your whole kriffing squad is already throwing you worried looks when they think you’re distracted.

            But he could’ve taken that. He could’ve handled a few lousy dreams at night. The real trouble is that the new nightmares cling to him the whole rest of the day, impossible to shake off no matter how sharply he turns, hitting him with these sudden, unexpected jolts of sensation. The click of the restraints closing around his wrists, the taste of blood filling his mouth, the first prickle of pain igniting beneath his skull, the raw and scraping pressure of a scream building in the back of his throat.

            He’d sort of been getting a handle on it, that short stretch of time back on D’Qar. He’d just gotten up and paced around the base when the dreams woke him, walked until he’d shaken the shivering from his bones. Sometimes after that he could catch a couple of hours of dreamless sleep before morning.

            But D’Qar was about a thousand lifetimes ago now, D’Qar was an entire lost fleet ago, and the Falcon doesn’t have a lot of room for pacing.

            General Organa finds him the first time he tries it. Draws the whole confession out of him then, pulling the details of the torture from his head not with the Force but with a kindness and a patience that renders him defenseless. She tells him he has to talk to Doctor Kalonia and sends him off to the porg-infested galley to get some rest.

            And Poe sleeps, and sleeps, and _sleeps_.

            Maybe it’s the fact that he’s been running for so long on so little. Maybe it’s the adrenaline crash – at least a week overdue now – that’s finally sent him plummeting down into the kind of ineffable unconsciousness that tends to hit pilots post-mission.

            This, he thinks hazily, has been one hell of a mission.  

            He keeps surfacing in these weird little flickers, only awake enough to know that he is, then sinking down again into a confused tangle of dreaming and darkness. Each time he sinks a little deeper, and it gets harder and harder to tell what’s real.

            Once he thinks he talks to the General, asks questions he can’t remember as soon as they leave his lips. He can’t really understand what she’s saying back to him anyway —except, finally, for one thing:

            “Commander Dameron. Shut your mouth and close your eyes.”

            It sounds a lot like an order. Poe decides to obey.

            And there’s another time where he talks to his mom, so that can’t be real and he knows it, but he pretends anyway.

 _Poe, listen_ , she says, like he’s a little kid again and she’s teaching him how to fly. So he listens. He hears the whisper birds singing, somewhere above them. He hears his father laughing at something, just around the corner. He hears slow footsteps on a metal floor, and starts to shake.

            _No,_ his mom tells him, _no, Poe._ Listen _. What do you hear?_

            What he hears is the roar of the hangar ripping apart, the screaming (who? Tallie? Starck? _Who?_ ), the blaring alarm, the doors sealing shut.

            He shakes. He says, _I can’t._

His mom smiles down at him with such fondness that it sears right through him. She says _, That’s okay. Look up. What do you see?_ Like they’re learning constellations.

But there are no stars above him. There’s hardly any light at all. There’s a dark mask and a hand outstretched, a tall shadow falling over him, dragging with it the promise of pain, deep and endless.

            Poe takes a ragged breath and says, “No.” And then he’s blinking at the ceiling of the galley and reaching _up up up_ toward nothing at all before it all falls away again.

            He hears BB-8 say his name here and there, the special set of beeps that means _Poe_ and only _Poe_ , and each time it’s a surge of warmth insulating him against the cold room that his mind keeps throwing him back into. At one point he manages to mumble back, “Hey, BeeBee,” and rest his palm just beside his antenna. But then everything twists and goes all wrong, and they’re back on Jakku, and he’s watching his droid disappear into the desert again.

            _I’ll come back for you,_ he hears himself say, and knows he never will. The starless sky swallows up the sand and leaves nothing now, no light, nothing at all.

            This time it’s more of a soothing darkness, though. It turns everything cool and quiet, and he feels a calm that he thinks is very separate from himself. It’s _good_. He wants it to stay.

            It doesn’t, of course. Soon enough there are footsteps again. And there’s the distorted red light, there’s the shadow, the reaching hand. Cold dread twists in his gut, and Poe knows exactly what’s going to happen next because it _keeps_ happening _,_ it won’t _stop._

  He tells it to anyway. Chokes out, “Don’t,” the way he never did when it actually happened, leans away from it like a damn coward.

            “Poe?” the shadow answers uncertainly. Which isn’t really according to script. And then it _does_ stop, which _never_ happens, and Poe blinks hard, again and again, to bring the room into focus.

            The first thing he really sees is the porg on his stomach. It blinks back at him with huge dark eyes, silent and staring.

            [Be quiet,] BB-8 is warning someone bossily. [Be soft. Poe is very tired.]

            “I keep telling you, man, I don’t know what you’re saying,” the someone mutters back, and Poe jerks his head sideways to see Finn looking down at his droid from the bench on the opposite wall.

            His brain takes a long moment to process this. Or, all right, to process _Finn._ It sort of always does that, but that’s Finn’s fault for being so – so much all the time. The miracle rescuer, the unlikely hero who’d saved his life. The ex-stormtrooper who’d fought _Kylo Ren_ with a lightsaber he’d never held before.

            Or, more recently: the Resistance soldier who’d ignored Poe’s orders and nearly killed himself barreling toward a giant cannon.

            Finn is too many things, is the problem, Poe thinks vaguely. If he could just pick _one_ thing...well, that would help.  

            “Oh!” says Finn suddenly, leaning toward him, and Poe realizes he’s just been staring at him, blank-eyed. “You’re – are you awake?”

            “Uh,” Poe replies. It comes out a weird, scraping noise. He clears his throat and glances at the porg. It doesn’t move, remaining a spot of warmth on his stomach, only rising and falling with his breath. This is a little bit unnerving, so he looks back toward Finn. “Yes?” he tries.

            “Man,” says Finn, “you slept for like, three straight cycles.”

            [Poe is very tired,] BB-8 repeats, somewhere below him. [Poe is exhibiting symptoms of trauma and –]

            “No, buddy, I’m all right,” Poe tells him quickly, sitting up on his elbows and ignoring the brief rush of black in his vision. The porg slides a little bit, flapping its wings for balance and making an indignant noise. Finn just glances down at the droid and shakes his head.

            “I really need to learn binary,” he says. Apologetic, almost, like it’s his fault that the First Order didn’t offer classes in droidspeak. “I keep telling him I don’t understand but he keeps on talking.”

            “BeeBee’s got a lot to say,” Poe says, shrugging. He pauses. “Hang on. I was out for _how_ long?”

            “Three cycles,” Finn repeats. “Just about. You – you looked like...” He breaks off and shakes his head. “Um. Not good. But then you kept waking up and talking so Doctor Kalonia said to just leave you be.”

            “Talking,” Poe says. “Huh.” He sits up fully now, gently dislodging the protesting porg. “Not sure I wanna know what I said.”

            Finn’s lips twitch. “You asked General Organa if porgs can sense the Force.”

            Poe starts to nod absently, and then the words sink in. He stares at Finn. “You’re joking.”

            “Nope,” Finn says, full-on grinning now.

            Poe groans and rubs at his aching head. “Do I wanna know what she said?”

            “She told you to shut up and close your eyes.”

            Poe lets out a soft breath of a laugh. “ _That_ I remember.” His hand moves to his hair, which, predictably, is sticking out in about seven different directions. “Three cycles,” he repeats. He swings his legs over the edge of the bunk and stands, gripping onto the countertop where the porgs have left a little room. The galley’s clearly seen better days; some unidentified substance is chipping underneath his fingernails.

            “Kriff,” he says. “Has anything changed, are we still –?”

            “Yeah,” says Finn, his grin falling away. “I mean – no. Nothing’s changed.”

            “ _Kriff_ ,” Poe says again, taking a step forward. “Where’s the General? We’re gonna run out of fuel like this. I should go and see –”

            But Finn stands up to block him. “Nope,” he says. “You’re off-duty. General’s orders.”         

            Poe forces himself to meet Finn’s eyes, to offer up some approximation of an easy smile. “C’mon, buddy. I gotta get out there.”

            “I’m supposed to keep you in bed,” Finn says stubbornly. Which is something that gives Poe pause, because he’s Poe Dameron, and even a sleep-addled Poe Dameron is – well, kind of an idiot, as Jess would kindly say.

            He bites at his lip to prevent himself from answering that one, peering past Finn at the hallway instead, listening to the muffled voices and footsteps of what’s left of the Resistance. All out there without him, all trying to figure out what the hell they’re going to do next, and he could _help_.

            [Poe,] says BB-8, rolling over to nudge at his leg. [Poe, rest.]

            “I did rest,” Poe tells him, trying not to let his irritation into his voice. It’s not BeeBee’s fault. “I rested for way too long.”

            [Poe, listen,] BB-8 insists, and Poe thinks of his mom, of how real that had felt, and a shiver passes over his shoulders.

            Finn notices. “Hey,” he says, “I don’t know what your droid’s saying, but I think I agree? And seriously, I’ve got actual orders to make sure you’re resting at least till Kalonia can get to you.”

            Poe feels a flash of resentment so blistering and unexpected that it staggers him, and he has to fight hard not to say something stupid. “Orders,” he repeats instead.

            “From the General herself,” Finn confirms. He gives Poe an uncertain look. “I think she’s...I think she was pretty worried about you, honestly.”

            And isn’t that a concept. “Nothing to worry about,” Poe says distantly, and then his eyes linger on Finn’s for slightly too long, and just like that the words he’d been holding back come tumbling from his throat.

            “How come you didn’t follow mine?”

            Finn’s brow furrows. “What?”

            “My orders. My orders, you didn’t...” He trails off, pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes closing for a second against a wave of dizziness. His shoulders drop, and he breathes.

              “Poe?” Finn says after a beat. “You’re kind of losing me here.”

            Poe laughs again, quiet and unsteady, which probably doesn’t help his case. He’s losing _himself,_ is the problem, but – well, you can’t let that sort of thing stop you. So he opens his eyes and tries to talk his way back.

            “Yeah, I know, sorry, I – just. On Crait. I told you to fall back. And you didn’t.”  

            “Oh,” says Finn, and lowers his gaze.

            Poe briefly considers taking the opportunity to slip past him. But BB-8 rolls in front of his foot and whirrs at him worriedly, and Finn looks back before Poe can move, and – and anyway he couldn’t do that to Finn. He owes Finn more than that.

            Such as his life. For example.

            “Look, I’m...sorry,” Finn says. “About the whole...cannon thing. Afterward, Rose told me...” He trails off, shakes his head a little. “I should’ve listened to you. I know that now.”

            He _looks_ sorry. His eyes are dark with the weight of it, and Poe feels a twinge of guilt.

            “Hey,” he says, reaching over to clap his hand on Finn’s shoulder. “It’s...” But then he stops, because it’s not okay. He can’t say it’s okay. So he regroups. “You were trying to help. You made the choice you thought was right. I get that. It’s just...you’re more help if you stick around, buddy.”

             He tries for an encouraging smile, but he can feel it wavering and it’s hard to hold Finn’s gaze. Abruptly he wants about eighty cups of caf and a hundred bowls of soup. His legs don’t really seem to know how standing works anymore, either, and he grips onto Finn’s shoulder too tight.

            Finn shifts toward Poe like he’s getting ready to catch him. “Seriously, I think you should –”

            “How is Rose, anyway?” Poe interrupts, letting go of Finn and leaning himself back against the wall. Finn frowns, recognizing the distraction for what it is. He answers anyway.

            “She’s doing a lot better. She’s up and walking, and she...Poe?”

            Because Poe is slowly sliding down the wall. He scrambles to get himself upright again, flashing a grin. “That’s great!” he manages. “That’s great, man. She was really brave. You must be so relieved.”

            “Yeah, I am,” Finn agrees cautiously, watching him. He starts to look a little sideways, so Poe straightens himself up again. “Uh, Poe?” says Finn. “I really think you should lie down.”

            “I’m good,” Poe says. He offers a thumbs up as proof.

            “Uh-huh,” Finn replies skeptically.

            [Poe, rest,] BB-8 says, more agitated this time, spinning around his feet.

            “Told you, bud, I did that already,” Poe says.

            BB-8 gives him an irritated _whirrrrr_ and rounds on Finn instead. [Poe is very tired,] he says again, except this time he puts extra emphasis on every word, sharp little staccato sounds like he’s getting annoyed with the both of them. [Poe is malfunctioning. Poe should rest.]

            Finn looks so baffled that Poe laughs. “BeeBee, he doesn’t –”

            [POE IS VERY TIRED,] BB-8 interrupts, in the blaring series of beeps he reserves only for emergencies or truly stupid humans. [POE IS EXHIBITING SYMPTOMS OF –]

            “BeeBee!” Poe says again, kneeling down and resting both his hands gently on BB-8 like he’s going to lift him up. Which he might, if his knees didn’t feel so wobbly. “Come _on_ , buddy, it’s okay, I’m _okay_ , I’m gonna rest, I promise.”

            [You are exhibiting symptoms of trauma,] BB-8 says sternly. [You are showing signs of severe exhaustion.]

            “Yeah,” Poe answers. He can feel Finn’s eyes on him. “Yeah, I know, but I’ll take care of it. It’ll be okay. Promise. All right?”

            BB-8 responds with a doubtful beep, and Poe rubs the droid’s head.

            “It’ll be okay,” he says again, and gets the droid equivalent of a sigh.

            He realizes then that he can’t stand up, so he settles himself on the floor like it was on purpose, folding his legs and leaning back against the wall again. It’s a lot easier now that he isn’t sliding down it.

            “That’s not a bed,” Finn points out.

            “See, this is why we need you around,” Poe answers. “You know what things are.”

            Finn lets out a short huff, sort of like Snap did when he’d found Poe on that boulder. Equally annoyed and amused. He opens his mouth to respond further, but he’s interrupted by Major Kalonia appearing in the entryway.

            “Commander Dameron,” she says. “Disobeying doctor’s orders. What a surprise.”

            Finn shuffles to let her pass in the narrow space, and she kneels down by Poe, looking him over and shaking her head. She looks tired, strained, and Poe wonders how many of them are nursing injuries now.

            “To be fair, I don’t remember getting any doctor’s orders,” he tells her.

            “Oh, I’m sure there are a lot of things you don’t remember.” She offers her hand, and he sighs and allows her to pull him to his feet, walking him the three steps it takes to collapse back on the bunk.

            “Finn already told me the porg thing.”

            “That was one of the better ones,” Kalonia acknowledges, and takes the bench that Finn had been sitting on. Finn himself stands awkwardly in the remaining space, BB-8 rolling slowly back and forth at his feet.

            “So, what’m I dying of?” Poe asks, and Kalonia rolls her eyes.

            “Nobody’s dying.”

            “What’m I _sleeping_ of, then?” Poe replies. He nearly cuts himself off with a yawn.  

            “Do you want the short version or the long version?”

            “No offense, doc, but which one do you think I want?”

            Kalonia is unperturbed. “Your body’s had it with your nonsense,” she answers simply. “You’ve been pushing yourself too hard, and it’s staging a revolt.”

            “Huh.” Poe tilts his head. “Exciting.”

            “Last we checked you were running a fever,” Kalonia adds. “I’m betting that hasn’t changed, but we managed to get a med droid on board, so I’ll send it over for a scan. All that sleeping you did helped. You’ve just been through the ringer, and your body needs a little more time to get itself back together.” She pauses, catching his gaze and holding it. “Basically, Commander, you’ve run yourself into the ground. That’s really about all there is to it.”

            “So like a crash.”

            Kalonia gives him a questioning look. Poe had hardly realized he’d spoken out loud.

            “It’s like a crash landing,” Poe tries to explain. “With the controls damaged and – and...” He glances at Finn’s bemused expression and deflates. “...You know what, nevermind.”

            “Pilots.” Kalonia shakes her head, but she allows him a small smile before moving onward. “I also want to talk to you about some specialized treatment. A little later down the line, once we’re...re-established.”

            She means counseling, Poe realizes, a beat late; she probably just doesn’t want to say so in front of Finn. The counseling she’d recommended on D’Qar, right after Jakku. The counseling that General Organa had brought up again, about – well, three cycles ago, apparently. There hadn’t been any time for that on D’Qar, and now – now there’s plenty of _time_ , but securing psych treatment for hotshot flyboys with mutineer tendencies isn’t exactly at the top of the to-do list, and it won’t be for a long while, and he knows it. And Kalonia has to know that too.

            “Sounds good,” he says anyway, and she stands up and pats him on the shoulder.

            “Stay put, Commander,” she says. “I’ll check in later.”

            “I’ll be here,” Poe says, faux long-suffering, and catches her eyeroll as she leaves.

            “Wow,” says Finn, once she’s gone. “She sure likes you.”

            “I’m the favorite,” Poe agrees. It’s an old joke, one that Snap and Jess had started and Poe had perpetuated, and it feels hollow now. Like he’s going through the motions, playing at a role he doesn’t really deserve.  

            If any of that seeps into his tone, Finn doesn’t notice. He comes back over to sit on the bench again, giving Poe an amused look. “ _The_ favorite?”

            And it’s _good_ to see him smiling instead of worried, so Poe plays it up for him. “Oh, yeah. Everybody’s favorite. Ask anyone. They’ll tell you.”

            _Well, anyone who’s still alive._ But he swallows that thought down. He’s getting good at that sort of thing.

            “Hey, what about you?” he adds quickly.

            “Me?” Finn looks startled. “I...uh, don’t think I’m anybody’s favorite.”

            “No, I mean – okay, first of all, that’s not true – but I meant what about sleeping? For you?”

            “Oh, I’ve been sleeping,” Finn says, waving a hand. “On and off. Rey and I were sorta taking shifts in case you woke up. And C’ai was in earlier. I think Connix too.”

            “Oh, good,” Poe says. “Great. Everyone come and get a look at the useless pilot.” He means it to be a joke, but it doesn’t come out quite the way it was supposed to. Like he forgot the punchline or something, like he’s mangled it all up.

            Or at least, Finn doesn’t laugh. “That’s not...”

            Poe tries again. “Behold, the crasher of X-wings and leader of pointless mutinies...” But that’s...that’s really not right either, that’s just digging the hole deeper, and he doesn’t think he knows how to stop.

            “Come on,” says Finn sharply. “Don’t blame yourself for that.”

            Poe raises an eyebrow at him. “For what? The X-wings? I’ve crashed a lot of X-wings, Finn, it’s just true. Or the mutiny? It _was_ pointless. It wasted lives. And that’s true too.”

            He says it lightly – or as lightly as you can say that sort of thing – but Finn looks upset.

            “You did that for us _._ For me and for Rose.”

             Poe leans back, giving Finn a serious look. “That’s true,” he says slowly. “I did. And for everybody else, too.”

            “Yeah. You were just –”

            “And I was still wrong. And a lot of people still died.”

            Finn makes a frustrated noise. “You didn’t _know_.”

            “Also true. Still wrong.”

            “ _We’re_ the ones who leaked the information,” Finn argues. “We’re the ones who didn’t–”

            “Yeah, well, _I’m_ the one who let you go,” Poe interrupts. His head is starting to pound again, and Finn is so young, and Finn doesn’t understand, and that’s not Finn’s fault but he doesn’t _understand_. “You two had half a plan and a prayer and you—” _and you almost died, I thought you were dead, you almost_ died, “—and _I_ let you go. So if we’re playing the blame game here, that one’s on me.”

            He keeps his voice level. He’s only trying to lay the facts out.

            “ _Poe,”_ Finn says, shaking his head. “This is exactly what Rey felt.”

            Poe’s heartbeat sort of stutters at that. “What?”

            “Rey, when she was here earlier,” Finn explains. He has this cautious look on his face that Poe doesn’t really like. “I was – you weren’t waking up and we were worried, so she reached out to you. She said she felt something bad, something wrong, and I thought she meant physically? But then she said you felt _guilty_ , and something...else. She said it was overwhelming. Like, she had to walk out of the room for a second.”

            “She reached out to me,” Poe echoes. He feels weird. Shivery. He blinks a few times.

            Finn’s eyes widen in alarm. “Not like into your head,” he says hurriedly. “She doesn’t do that. Not like...”

            “Okay,” Poe says. There’s a cool numbness settling over him. Soothing his heartbeat, which had skipped straight to pounding.

            “We just were –”

            “ _Okay_. It’s okay.” He realizes he’s talking too loud, so he offers up a strained smile. “I got it, buddy. Rey can’t help her magic Jedi feelings powers.”

            “Um. Something like that? I’m...not honestly sure. But Poe, if you...want to talk about anything...” Finn trails off, a little awkward, the way he sometimes seems to get when he enters territory untouched by stormtrooper training.

            So Poe just nods at him in an encouraging sort of way. He feels a little sick. He isn’t sure why. Just that the prospect of Rey feeling _something bad_ in him is – is a lot. The idea that she could know just by being in the room – that she felt it so easily. Whatever Kylo Ren had done to him. All the still-smoldering damage laid bare.

            “Yeah,” he hears himself say. “Thanks. Same for you.”

            Finn seems relieved to have gotten this one right. Pleased with himself, even. And that makes Poe feel a little bit better. He manages to shift the conversation toward lighter things, stupid things, like how horrible the rations are that Finn has procured them and whether it’s possible to turn them into something edible.

            “Salt,” Finn suggests, between bites.

            Poe wrinkles his nose. “Are you tasting what I’m tasting? This thing is like a block of salt.”

            “Okay, okay...pepper?”

            “All right, so the First Order doesn’t have a spice cabinet. Noted.”

            “I was in _sanitation_ , not food prep,” Finn protests, and Poe just shakes his head.

            “Look,” he says. “What this thing needs is a good hot sauce, something spicy enough that you can’t taste the hint of sour vomit underneath.”

            Finn’s entire face scrunches up in disgust. It’s weirdly endearing. “Did you really have to say ‘sour vomit’ while I’m chewing?”

            Poe shrugs, and settles with his arms folded behind his head. “Just telling it like it is, buddy.”

*

            BB-8 wants to know, later, if Poe is still malfunctioning. 

            “Am I what?” Poe mumbles at him, letting his arm hang over the edge of the bunk to rest his palm on the dome of BB-8’s head. He’d fallen into this weird, light sleep again after Finn had left, waking up periodically to scan his surroundings before dozing off again.

            The porgs seem to have some kind of schedule. Sometimes he opens his eyes to find a whole flock of them around him, sometimes there’s just a few hanging around (usually staring at him; he can’t figure out why). Right now they’ve mostly cleared out, just the one lingering somewhere near his elbow.

            BB-8 repeats the question, a little slower.

            “Oh,” Poe says, lifting his hand back to run it through his hair. (Which is seriously out of control. He wonders idly if there’s any hair serum on the Falcon.) “No, buddy. I’m good. We’re good.”

            [You are not good,] BB-8 replies, a low, sad tone. He’s rolling slowly back and forth like he wants to get a better look at Poe. [You are operating at a subpar level.]

            Poe snorts. “Subpar, huh?” he says. “That isn’t very nice.” He sits up, staring around the room. It’s quiet except for his breathing and the rustling of the porgs, and he keeps listening for footsteps that don’t come.

            “Hey, BeeBee?” he says after a moment. “Why don’t you tell me about your big adventure again? With Finn and Rose?”

            BB-8 tilts his head and trills a question.

            “Yeah, I mean all of it,” Poe answers, smiling. “Of course I mean all of it.”

            And BB-8 can’t resist that, so Poe settles back down to enjoy the stream of excited, rapidfire beeps and trills and whirrs. He thinks his little droid might be exaggerating here and there, because there are a few extra actiony parts Poe definitely doesn’t remember from the last retelling, and a couple of new explosions. But it’s beautiful. It fills the whole room up so there’s no space left for anything else, and for a while he feels warm and light.

*

            The next time he wakes, General Organa is there. She’s sitting on the bench with her datapad in hand and looking away from him, looking distant. The porg in her lap kind of ruins the whole Serious General vibe, but Poe still doesn’t want to disturb her from her thoughts – doesn’t want to remind her of his own presence at all actually, which is a weird feeling. A desire to fade out of view, to be forgotten, at least for a while. It’s such a foreign concept that it sort of stuns him, and he just lays there staring up at nothing until she turns her gaze on him.

            He _feels_ it. Her watching him. And he sits up, and tilts his head toward her.

            “Commander,” she says, then shakes her head minutely, adding, “Poe.”

             There’s a kindness in the way she says his name that he wasn’t sure he had left, anymore, after she’d raised her hand and shot him. And – _Commander_. As though it matters anymore. As though it means anything.

            “Sorry, General,” he says, sleep-hoarse. “Didn’t mean to hog the galley for so long.”

            She smiles, and her eyes are sad. They’re always sad lately and he hates that, hates that he can’t do anything about it. “Rey spoke to me,” she says.

            And Poe –

            He keeps very still. He says, “Yeah?” like it’s nothing that interests him much. Which it shouldn’t, because he’s already told her. He’s already told her everything. It shouldn’t matter what Rey felt, what Rey said. And anyway maybe Rey’s wrong.

            “I felt it too,” Leia adds, as though she knows what he’s thinking, and Poe doesn’t move. Barely breathes.

            “I should have known,” Leia goes on. “When you came back, looking like you did. What happened to you...that needed time. I shouldn’t have sent you back out so soon. I’m sorry for that.”

            Poe doesn’t process things in silence and stillness. He likes to pick things apart aloud, or else let them sort themselves out in his head and his heart while he’s soaring in an X-wing, fighting for his life, for everyone’s lives.

            But he lets the silence fall now, lets himself stay still, and the General’s words sit heavy in his head. He hates himself for it, a little bit. He should be telling her _no, don’t apologize, don’t apologize to_ me _, that’s wrong, that’s all wrong._ He should be telling her, _it was my fault anyway, for getting caught._

            He believes all those things. But he doesn’t tell her any of them.

            He tells her, “You needed me.”

            Leia holds his gaze. “Yes,” she says. Sighs a little. “We did.”

            And maybe she sees it or maybe she senses it, the sharp edge of his uneasy nerves – he’s a pilot without a ship, an only-just-reinstated commander with no squadron, he’s this broken thing taking up space and resources right now, useless and sleeping on until eternity for reasons he doesn’t fully understand and she won’t even let him _help_.

            She must know it’s there, one way or another. Because she says, clear and deliberate, “We still need you, Poe.”

            Poe breathes that in. Holds it tight to his chest, and then exhales, looking down at his empty hands.

            “How are you feeling?” Leia asks, before he can manage to form a response.

            “Tired of sleeping,” he answers, and Leia’s mouth quirks in amusement.

            “Take all the rest you can, flyboy. When we land we’re going to need you steady on your feet.”

            Poe’s head jerks toward her. “Land?” he repeats. “When? Where? I can –”

            Leia holds up a hand to silence him. “Not yet. We’re still working on establishing contact with a couple of old allies. I promise I’ll keep you informed. But I want you to remain –”

            “Off-duty,” Poe mutters. “Finn said.”

            “It isn’t a punishment. I told you that. Three times now, I think.”

            Poe gives her a bland look. “I gotta be honest, General. It still feels like one.”

            “It _isn’t_ ,” Leia repeats, with that sad-eyed smile again. “You’ll just have to trust me on that.”

            And the thing is that he does. Of course he does. He always will. She could stun him a thousand times and he always would.

            So he nods at her. His throat feels thick, every word he could say feels wrong. He wants to get up, go to the cockpit and pretend not to be useless there. To talk out strategy for rebuilding with whoever will let him. To do _something_ , anything but sit and wait here on this narrow bunk with his nerves so weak and his bones so heavy.

            He isn’t _good_ at this. He wants, desperately, to do something he’s good at.

            “Poe,” says the General again. “You’re exactly where you need to be.”

            He’s silent for a moment longer, and then he swallows, hard. “Doesn’t feel like that.”

            She lifts the porg and sets it down on the bench beside her, then stands up and clasps his shoulder firmly. “Sometimes it doesn’t. But again, you’re going to have to trust me.”

            Poe nods again, and clears his throat. “I was wondering...” He hesitates.

            “Spit it out, Dameron.”

            He grins sheepishly. “Did I seriously ask you about porgs and the Force?”

            Leia just looks at him for a beat, and then _laughs_. Actually laughs, just a tiny bit, and Poe’s heart does this painful little leap, and he wonders how long it’s been since he’s heard that.

            “Yes, Commander. You seriously did.”

            Poe digests this.

            “I mean...” he starts, and she gives him a Look, one of those Poe-Dameron-Don’t-You-Start type Looks. But he keeps going anyway. Because this is what he does, _this_ is what he’s good at, and he’s always going to chase down an opportunity to make her laugh. “I mean, but... _do_ they?”

            Leia looks at him like she can’t quite believe he’s here asking her _this,_ of all things, at this moment. And in truth, neither can Poe, so that’s just fine.

            “You know, Dameron,” she says at last, “I really, really don’t know.”

            Behind her, the porg raises its stubby wings and chirps cheerfully.

*

            He does still have a fever, according to the med droid. High enough that Kalonia comes to see him a few minutes after the scan, low enough that she doesn’t seem to think he’s in any imminent danger. She digs a packet of pills out of an old medpack that someone had found on board, and Poe swallows them reluctantly after a brief and futile argument about how they’d be better off saving them for somebody who needs them.

            “There. That should bring your temperature down for now,” Kalonia says.

            “I’m freezing already,” Poe answers – whines, probably, because that’s where he’s at right now – and she shakes her head.

            “You’ve got chills. That’s not the same thing.”

            Poe’s too tired to argue with that, so he just makes a vague and unhappy noise at her, curling onto his side beneath the thin blanket from the medpack. His ribs ache from the pressure, but he feels better on his side, safer. And this way he can look down and see BB-8 there beside the bunk, which helps.

            “We spoke about counseling,” Kalonia says after a long while, and her voice is startling in the relative quiet. He hadn’t realized she was even still there.

            “Yeah,” he mumbles.

            “I don’t know when or how we’ll make that happen now,” she says quietly. “But you deserve help when we can give it.”

            Poe feels this little stab of pain in his chest, separate from all the other soreness. “I’m okay,” he tells her. “There’s...” He stretches one arm out to gesture weakly at nothing. “...there’s lots worse. Happening.”

            Kalonia is silent for a moment, and then she says, “What is the Resistance about, Commander?”

            He gives her a guarded look. “You’re here,” he says. “You know what it’s about.”

            “I do. But I want to hear it from you.”

            Poe pauses, mulling this over, and then lifts his head. The room spins, but this is important, so he waits it out. That’s another thing he’s getting good at.

            “Fighting,” he says finally. “For what’s right. For people not to be hurt. To not be afraid.” He thinks of his mom, of his dad and the ranch. “Giving people a chance,” he adds.

            “A chance at what?”

            He half-shrugs. “Just to – live.”

            “Everybody deserves that,” Kalonia agrees.

            Poe lowers his head again. “Right.”

            “Do you think you deserve that too?”

             It’s another sort of jolt to his chest, and he frowns, clawing his way up out of this sinking, dizzy feeling to try to latch onto some sort of coherent response. He knows what she’s doing, he thinks, but he can’t see a way out of the conversation. He’s only really got one foolproof trick for that, and there are no X-wings on board the Falcon. Plus his legs probably aren’t going to let him stand up anytime soon.

            “That’s not...how it works,” he says.

            “You’re not one of the people?”

            Poe lifts his head again – a bad idea, his stomach informs him, but he ignores it – to give her a level stare. “I’m a pilot.”

            Kalonia lifts a brow. “Well,” she says, “can’t say you’re wrong on that.”

            Poe sighs at her, a thin and fractured breath. “Is this a...” He pauses to comb clumsily through his muddled thoughts, pull out the right terminology. “Is this a psych eval, doc?” he asks. “’Cause I would’ve prepared better.”

            She smiles faintly. “Not officially, no. But you’ve taken some interesting risks lately.”

            Poe snorts. And then sort of slowly collapses down against the pillow he’s made out of his folded up jacket. More rest actually sounds pretty good, now, he’s decided. Maybe the General was onto something there. She usually is.

             “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’ve been told.”

             “Vice-Admiral Holdo,” Kalonia begins, and Poe doesn’t realize he’s shaking his head until she raises her eyebrows at him.

            “I don’t want to talk about that,” he mutters into the folded sleeve of his jacket, and feels a sweeping sense of shame.

            But, well, this is _Kalonia_. It’s not like it’s Finn, or the General even. Kalonia has already seen him at his worst and his weakest, whether drugged out of his mind on pain meds or just drifting merrily into shock and chatting all the way. She’d once tolerated him rambling for a full _hour_ about whether or not he thought his mother would be proud of him for walking away from a mission with only a few broken ribs, or angry at him for making it more dangerous than it had to be. (He’d passed out before he’d come to a conclusion on that one, and he still isn’t sure.)

            Kalonia has seen him collapse from blood loss like an idiot halfway into the medbay, has seen him fidgeting at Finn’s bedside late at night when post-Starkiller nerves had him restless, has witnessed him fall apart more times than he can count. She knows exactly what sort of risks he takes, exactly which ones might seem more _interesting_ than usual.

            She shakes her head back at him now, speaks to him in the same level voice she always has when he’s given her trouble before. “I was only going to say that Vice-Admiral Holdo also took some interesting risks.”

            And just like that all of Poe’s warring thoughts, his guilt and his shame and his lingering resentment, collapse in on themselves.  

            “Oh,” he says, and stares down at BB-8, the orange-and-white comfort of him. Best colors around, he thinks muzzily, grasping onto that unwavering fact like a lifeline. Best droid around, too. So, hey, he has that going for him, if nothing else.

            “A little advice, Dameron,” says Kalonia after a while, and he looks up to see her watching him with a gentleness he can’t quite meet head-on.  

            “Give your ego a break,” she says. “It’s not all on you.”

            He lets the idea roll around in his head a little. “It’s not _not_ on me,” he answers, his voice still muffled by the jacket. He’s not totally sure he’s making sense; his eyes are near closing.

            “Did I say that?” Kalonia says, exasperated, and Poe doesn’t answer so much as give a kind of noncommittal mumble, burrowing his face deeper into the jacket-pillow. He feels a couple of the porgs settle against his back and sighs.

            [Sleep now,] BB-8 suggests, and...and where’s he picking up that worrywart attitude anyway? Can’t be Rey. Maybe Finn. Should talk to Finn again. Make sure he understands there’s nothing to worry about.

            “There’ll be time to talk later,” Kalonia says, and Poe has just enough time to register the note of amusement in her voice before he falls asleep.

 

*

            He burns.

            He’s in the desert, barefoot, sweat drenching through his shirt. He tries to hide his face from the scorching sun, but twisting sideways only makes his ribs scream out. Every nerve is alight, singed raw. Each grain of sand is a separate point of pain.

            But he keeps walking, because you have to. ( _You start something, Poe, you follow it through_ , his dad says, bent over repairing the fence at the far edges of the ranch.) He keeps walking and there’s fire blooming bright and terrible all around him and the hangar doors slam shut and the alarms blare and they’re still _in_ there, all of them, still in there, _burning_ – 

            Someone cries out. It’s a horrible, wounded noise. His body tries to jerk away from it, but it’s coming from everywhere.

            There’s a voice, a different voice. It’s soft and worried. It says, “Poe, hey, Poe...”

            He can’t answer. Chokes on the heat when he tries. He burns, and he burns, and he _burns_. Thrown from the hangar, covered in soot from the blast. Raising his blaster on Jakku. Shivering in an interrogation cell, trudging through miles of sand, sleeping fitfully in the cockpit of his X-wing. Everywhere he’s ever been, he’s burning away, and soon there isn’t going to be any more of him left.

            “Can you hear me?” There’s a touch at his arm, and Poe thrashes away from it. The voice goes silent.

            Either a moment or an eternity passes.

            And then someone else says, “Commander Dameron,” and oh, he knows that voice down to his bones. Knows that voice before he knows his own name, sometimes.

            He goes still. He says, hoarse and confused, “Leia,” and waits for the bolt from her blaster, because that’s how the nightmare goes.

            But it doesn’t come. 

            “Sit up, Poe,” Leia says.

            So he does. It hurts, and that doesn’t matter because now he can see Leia’s face, and she’s frowning at him, and so he must’ve done something wrong.

            “ _Leia_ ,” he says again, anxious and contrite, and starts to slide downward.

            There’s a cool hand at his back to support him. There’s a cup held to his lips.

            “Drink,” Leia says.

            So he does. Something gloriously cold soothes his throat, and then he’s easing back down again. The world begins to soften, all starry hyperspace blurs of light.

            “Where,” he murmurs at it. “Where are we going?”

            “You,” says Leia, “are going back to sleep.”

            So he does.

*

            [You are malfunctioning,] BB-8 tells him sadly, when he struggles his way to consciousness later.

            And man, it’s getting old, this sleeping thing. This _malfunctioning_ thing. He barely remembers even falling asleep before. Has a vague sense that he’d embarrassed himself in front of the General again, but what else is new.

            “No, buddy,” he says, letting his arm fall back across his eyes. Somewhere there’s a porg chirping anxiously; he thinks he feels his knuckles brush against sleek feathers. “I’m just...I’m sick, or something.”

            That’s gotta be it. The whole fever thing. That would explain the fact that his head feels stuffed with cotton, and how his stomach lurches when he shoves his way up out of the bunk.

            He’s down on his knees before he can even fully straighten up. BB-8 rolls over with a worried burble, and Poe can’t respond. He reaches out, braces both his hands on either side of his droid’s body and lets his head hang down, breathing around his nausea until it’s manageable again.

            “Okay,” he mutters. “Okay, just, give me a sec.”

            BB-8 offers an uncertain whistle. [I can find Major Kalonia –]

            “No,” Poe says quickly. “No. I just need the – the ’fresher. Okay? I need. Kriff.” He starts to lift himself, collapses down again on his hands and knees, and somehow _that’s_ it. That’s what finally brings him to the limit of his tolerance for the whole damn situation. He spills out a stream of curses in at least three languages, BB-8 quietly nudging closer to help him stay halfway up.

            “You’re the best droid,” Poe tells him, after a few steadying breaths, a few hard blinks. “You know that, right? Best droid in the Resistance. Best droid in the anywhere.”

            This earns him a very chuffed sort of beep, and then BB-8 says, [Rey can help Poe.]

            “Huh?” Poe says. “Uh, no, that’s okay, I’m sure she’s busy with...Jedi stuff...”

            “I’m not.”

            Poe nearly topples back over, he twists around so fast. Rey is standing half in the corridor and half in the galley, frowning down at him, which is not embarrassing at all. Is there anybody left on this ship who hasn’t seen him make a fool out of himself? Probably not. Probably that’s for the best. Might as well lower their expectations.

            “What did you need help with?” Rey asks curiously, and Poe shakes his head.

            “I’m good. Just need a sec.”

            Rey just looks at him for a second, then turns to BB-8. “What does he need help with?”

            “Hey –”

            [Poe wants to go to the refresher,] BB-8 reports, and Poe sighs.

            “Thanks, buddy, thanks for that.”

            [You are welcome.]

            Rey gives the droid a small smile. She always smiles like she isn’t used to it. Poe had known her for – what, ten hours, tops? – before his body commenced its dramatic crash. But he’d noticed that right away. 

            “Come on,” Rey says, and holds out her hand toward him.

            It’s too close to his face, and Poe’s too tired to cover up his flinch. There’s this tiny moment of eye contact between the two of them, this tiny breathless pause. And then Poe reaches back, allowing her to help him out into the corridor, BB-8 rolling along behind them.

            Walking is a little rough, but Rey’s strong, and she keeps his staggering legs moving forward in a straight line.

            “Thanks,” Poe says sheepishly. “Haven’t been out of that room in a hundred years.”

            “Or maybe twelve hours?” Rey suggests.

            Poe inclines his head. “Same thing.”

            “Right.” She halts them in front of the refresher. “Do you need—?”

            “Wh – oh, no,” Poe says, flushing slightly. He extricates himself from her, leaning up against the doorway, and tries on his best smile. “I’ll be all right.”

            Maybe his best smile is looking a little frayed these days, because Rey looks dubious. “I’ll wait here.”

            “Seriously, I’m –”

            “I’m going to wait,” Rey interrupts. She folds her arms, and gives him one of those not-quite-comfortable smiles. “I’m good at waiting.”

            “Sure,” Poe says. “Okay.” And his head is swimming, so he ducks inside as quickly as possible. What he wants – what he _really_ wants, with a sudden ferocity – is a good shower. Or at least a sonic shower, which is all they have right now. But his legs aren’t gonna last very long, so he contents himself with washing his face, trying to move fast enough that Rey doesn’t get worried and slow enough that his stomach doesn’t upend its meager contents onto the floor.

            He manages. Feels kind of good about it, too – gotta celebrate the small victories, right? – until he emerges and sees the way Rey’s looking at him.

            “BeeBee Ate says you’re supposed to go lie down again,” Rey says, before Poe can open his mouth.

            “ _BeeBee Ate_ doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Poe says, shooting the droid a betrayed look.

            BB-8 makes an offended sound and turns to Rey. [Poe is still malfunctioning,] he announces.

            “I know,” Rey answers, over Poe’s protests. “Which is why he’s going to go lie down.”

            And Poe, well, he doesn’t have a great track record with refusing Force users. (Which is a joke that he’ll maybe laugh at sometime in the next decade.) So he mumbles, “All right, all right,” and lets Rey lead the way back to the galley.

            “I’m never getting out of here,” he announces, sitting heavily on the bunk. “I’m going to be in here for the rest of my life. Doesn’t anybody want to _use_ the galley?”

            “No,” Rey answers. She sits on the edge of the bench, so their knees are almost touching. “None of the appliances work. And all the rations are in the cargo hold anyway.”

            Poe sighs and reaches out to pet an errant porg that’s made its way over to perch on his knee. He thinks it’s the same one from before.

            “Do they have names?” he asks, struck by a sudden thought.

            Rey looks at him funny. “The rations?”

            Poe shakes his head. “The porgs.”

            “Oh.” Rey frowns. “Not...that I know of.”

            “Well, this one’s gonna be Wexley,” Poe says, tapping the porg’s head lightly. It sort of coos at him, which he decides is a good thing. When he glances up, there’s a new softness in Rey’s expression.

            “You’re good at that,” she says. “Giving out names. Finn told me.”

              It takes a moment to sink in, what she means, and when it does he feels oddly self-conscious. “Wasn’t gonna call him by a number,” he says with a shrug. “That’s just basic decency, right? And he didn’t even really have to keep Finn, I mean, it was just the first thing I thought of. There wasn’t a whole lot of time to brainstorm other options.”

            Rey looks puzzled. “But he _is_ Finn.”

            “Right,” Poe says. “I just meant...well, it doesn’t matter, I guess. He can keep it if he likes it.” She’s giving him a shrewd stare now, so he clears his throat. “By the way – I don’t know if I actually said thanks yet, for saving BeeBee Ate. You were good to him. He thinks the world of you for that.”

            Rey shrugs at him. “Just basic decency,” she echoes, parsing the words as though this is an unfamiliar concept, one she’s curious to explore.

            And watching her, Poe remembers Jakku vividly all of the sudden. The brutality of the place. Scorching heat during the day, vicious cold at night. “Nothing for nothing,” Naka Iit had said. What would it be like, to grow up not knowing how green and soft and beautiful the world could be? To grow up learning _nothing for nothing_ as the law of the land?

            “Must be weird,” he says aloud, “going from Jakku to...” He waves a hand at the galaxy at large. “...all this.”

            Rey studies him for a moment like she’s trying to pull a hidden meaning from his words. “I’m not used to so many people,” she allows finally.

            Poe gives a ragged laugh, and Rey narrows her eyes.

            “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry, not laughing at you. It’s just...there used to be a lot more...”

            _Of us_ , he means to say, but his voice sort of collapses before he can get there. He swallows and tries again, but his breath catches and he – no. No, _no_ , he’s not going to do this now. He’s not going to break down in front of the Jedi. Not happening.

            _Not again_ , he amends, and has to try very hard to meet Rey’s eyes.

            She looks back at him in this pensive sort of way. “Finn told me about the Finalizer,” she says. “What happened to you there.”

            Poe doesn’t breathe for a second. And then – because you have to, you _have_ to – he drags out a smile.

            “Oh, yeah, that whole thing,” he says, reaching over to draw the rumpled medpack blanket over his shoulders. He’s feeling a little shivery again. “Finn told you that, huh?”

            Which would be fine, except the thing is that _he_ hadn’t told Finn. Or he can’t remember telling Finn, anyway. Unless maybe word’s just gotten around by now – _Poe Dameron had his head torn apart_ is the sort of rumor that could spread pretty fast if the right people let it.

            “He heard you,” Rey says simply, and Poe isn’t certain what she means. The nightmares here, or the real thing on the Finalizer.

            He remembers screaming. At the end of it. Hadn’t ever really thought about Finn being around to hear that.

            “It happened to me too,” Rey continues while Poe’s still trying to scramble back out of that black hole of a memory, and he looks at her sharply, feeling a rush of anger at the concept.

            “They _tortured_ –?”

            “No,” she says. “Not like what they did to you. But he tried to get in my head too. He did, for a little while.” Her expression is distant. “Then I sort of...pushed him out.”

            “Sounds like a Jedi thing.” It’s got to be. Leia said...what did she say? _You couldn’t have stopped him, Poe_. Leia said that. She would know.

            Rey doesn’t dispute his theory. “It hurts,” she says, calm as anything. “What he does.”

            “Yeah,” Poe replies, after a pause. “It does.”

             “He isn’t going to win.” She’s staring hard at him, and it’s like she’s trying to convince the both of them, like she wants to say _because I won’t let him_.

            Poe’s hand tightens around the blanket. “I know. I know he’s not.”

            “We have everything we need right here,” Rey adds, a degree less fierce, and something about that sounds like she’s echoing someone.

            Poe smiles. “Leia tell you that?”

            Her eyebrows lift. “How’d you know?”

            “Just do,” Poe says, quiet. “Just sounds like her.”

            Rey considers this. “You’ve known her a long time,” she guesses.

            “Could say that, sure. My mom and dad fought alongside her. And Luke Skywalker.”

            There’s a flicker of hurt in her expression there, unmistakable. “Did you know him too?”

            He remembers being small and asking his mom the same question, once, back when Luke Skywalker was the occasional hero of his bedtime stories. _Did you know him? Did you really know Luke?_

            “Not...not really,” Poe says now. “He gave my mom some kind of magic tree once.”

            Rey’s brow furrows at this information, but she doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t look at him either. She picks at the leather bracer on her wrist like she’s trying to readjust it. There’s a thin, healing scar across her upper arm that he somehow hadn’t noticed before, and Poe just gazes at it for a moment. Wonders how it happened.

            “He...” Poe starts, then shakes his head a little. “He didn’t make it...did he?”

            Rey looks up. “No.”

            “Oh.”

            He’d known that. Of course he had. There’d been no reason to bring it up, to remind them of their losses, to put that hurt look on Rey’s face.

            Poe looks away, and they’re both silent for a while.

            He thinks about the tree in his yard, how he used to stand there when he was little (and okay, when he was not-so-little) and press his palms to the bark and pretend he could feel the Force flowing through it, through _him_. How he’d always imagined it as this benevolent thing, warm and bright and golden like whisper bird feathers. He thinks about telling Rey about that. Maybe she’d laugh.

            But Rey stands up before he can say anything, shoulders stiff and straight. “I’m sorry about earlier,” she says. “When I reached out to you. You were asleep, so I thought...” She shakes her head. “I didn’t mean to make you nervous.”

            “I’m not nervous,” Poe replies, and realizes it’s true as he says it. Rey, for all her eerie stares and magic Jedi powers, somehow has a sort of grounding effect. Maybe that’s what Jakku does to you. “You were trying to help. It’s all right.”

            Her shoulders relax in obvious relief. “I wouldn’t do anything like...like Kylo Ren,” she says, all but curling her lip at the name. “I’m not like him.”

            “Couldn’t be if you tried, kid,” Poe assures her. “He’s a special kind of asshole.”

              _That_ startles a laugh out of her, warm and bright, and Poe feels a sense of deep accomplishment. “Rest, okay?” she says, before she leaves. “Your droid’s going to short-out if he keeps worrying like that.”

            “I’m all right,” Poe protests at her retreating back. BB-8 whistles in dissent, and Poe lies back across the bunk, tucking the Wexley porg beside him. “Look, do you see this resting?” he demands. “Best resting you ever saw, right? Best resting in the Resistance.”

            [Acceptable,] BB-8 responds.

            “Come on, BeeBee, you’re killing me here,” Poe grumbles. But he _is_ tired – he’s always tired, he’s never going to not be tired – and it’s easy enough to drift off again.  

*

            He’s awake and back on the floor when Kalonia checks in, this time because he wants to be there. Mostly because it feels roomier than sitting on the bunk, and also because there are at least a dozen porgs there right now (including Wexley) and Poe doesn’t really want to tell them to move. He’s got his datapad and some old Black Squadron mission logs and he’s combing through every word, trying to find anything that might be useful to them now, any offhand comment about an old base here or Resistance sympathizers there, anything he can bring to the General.

            [Why?] BB-8 had asked curiously, when Poe announced this plan.

            “Because,” Poe had answered. “There’s always something you can do.” Which is some pure Shara Bey wisdom right there, one of those things he remembers her saying all the time. Sometimes when she was talking about the news with his dad, sometimes when Poe was trying to skip chores. Either way she was always right.

            BB-8 gets into the spirit of things, accessing his own data, offering facts and snippets of reports here and there that Poe is beginning to suspect are mostly designed to distract him, but, whatever, Poe’s not gonna call him on it right now.

            (At one point BB-8 cheerfully announces, [Kare Kun stated that she was ‘done with this shit’ in Flight Log 247-98C-45B, and called her destination a ‘cesspool of A-S-S-H-O-L-E-R-Y.’]

            Poe takes a minute to decipher this. Either ‘assholery’ is a tough word to translate into binary or BB-8 just doesn’t know what it means. Hopefully the latter. “Ah...okay, buddy, thanks,” he says slowly. “But maybe don’t access Kare’s reports anymore.”

            BB-8 tilts his head, rolling sideways. [Why?]

            “Because I don’t want you picking up bad words, that’s why. You’re gonna make me look bad.”)

            “Really, Poe,” says Kalonia, stopping short when she sees him. “It’s not a hard instruction to follow.”

            “Sorry, what was it again?” he says, not quite looking up.

            He can feel Kalonia’s unamused stare. “Rest. That’s all. That’s your only job right now.”

            “Yeah, but I’m feeling better.”

            He is aware that, probably, he doesn’t look too much better. He’s got the chills again and his hands are trembling, which is just plain inconvenient. The scratchy medpack blanket is still draped over his shoulders, and he’d had his hair sort of tamped down earlier but it’s back to doing its level best to look as wild as possible. BB-8 is leaning up against him, or maybe he’s leaning up against BB-8; he isn’t entirely sure at this point.

            But he’s feeling okay right now, really. He’s got a task in front of him and Force knows he needs one.

            Kalonia kneels down to look at the datapad. “Going over old flight logs?”

            “Looking for info we can use,” he answers. “Somewhere we can fuel up. Sympathetic rich people. Anything.”

            “I thought the General had you off-duty.”

            “She does. I am. This is a...” Poe waves a hand. “...recreational activity.”

            “Hm.” Kalonia settles down on the floor with him, mirroring his cross-legged pose. “You had a hell of a fever earlier, you know.”

            “Yeah?” Poe says, still skimming the report in front of him. (Pava’s always so detailed, has he ever told Pava how much he appreciates her attention to detail? Probably not, because she’d probably make fun of him if he did.) “Looks like I lived though.”

            “Looks like you did. Eaten anything lately?”

            “A while ago.”

            “Are you hungry?”

            He considers that. He should be, but he thinks at some point he passed the point of hunger into numbness, so it’s hard to tell. Kalonia apparently takes his prolonged silence as a yes, because she hands him something prepackaged and slightly squishy.

            “Thanks,” Poe says, and tears into whatever it is without ceremony. It tastes sort of sour and the texture is weird, but his stomach wakes up starving the minute he starts chewing so he doesn’t much care. He studies Pava’s report for what might be the fourth time, and Kalonia watches him.

            “Have you thought about what I said?” she asks.

            “Resting,” Poe says, flicking through to a different mission report. “Rest time. You got it. Only heard that about fifty times now.” BB-8 burbles at him, and he nods. “Not fifty times, fine, but a lot.”

            “Not about that. About giving your ego a break,” Kalonia says. “Recognizing that you aren’t solely responsible for the Resistance. Ring any bells?”

            “Oh, that, yeah. Gonna consider it.” Poe stands up, datapad in hand. His legs are steadier now, either from the food in his stomach or the fever letting up. “So am I cured yet?”

            Kalonia rises with him. “Of your egotism? I think that’s going to take a while.”

            Poe shakes his head, unperturbed. “Of my sleeping thing.”

            “Your fever’s down,” Kalonia answers, watching him pace the few steps he can in the cramped quarters. “But I want you to take it easy still.”

            “So I’m still trapped in here.”

            “Didn’t say that, Commander,” Kalonia sighs. “Work on your listening skills.”

            He stops pacing. “Okay, okay, I’m listening.”

            “Your body still needs time to catch up to everything. But you’re getting there. Take advantage of the downtime for now. Eat, sleep, take short walks if you’d like, but don’t push yourself.”

            Poe opens his mouth to inform her that there is no way he could possibly _push himself_ when he’s sequestered in the galley on a ship he isn’t allowed to even fly, but she holds a hand up to silence him.

            “Meaning the minute you feel even _slightly_ tired, you go lie down.” He must make a face at her, because she adds, “I’m not kidding about that. You’ve gotten a little too much practice ignoring your body’s warning signals. Anything that actually gets through that wall of stubborn stoicism needs to be taken seriously. Do you understand?”

            Poe snaps a salute. “Yes, ma’am. Taking this very seriously, ma’am.”

            “Good. Because frankly we don’t have the resources to deal with the Dameron Near-Death Experience Show right now.”

            “With all due respect, Major, I’m pretty sure the Dameron Near-Death Experience Show has been canceled and replaced by the Dameron Napping Endlessly Show.”

            “I think I’ve seen that one before,” Kalonia muses. “I seem to recall an episode in which our hero decides he’s cured of the flu halfway through treatment and winds up facedown outside the medbay.”

            Poe frowns. “I don’t remember that episode at all.”

            “Well, you were delirious at the time.”

            “Huh. Bet it got bad reviews.”

            “Critics were harsh,” Kalonia agrees. “Speaking of which, we do have sedatives on board. Just throwing that out there.” She’s smiling at him though, exasperated and fond, and there’s something steadying about that. The fact that she’s looking at him like he’s still him.

            “Does reading count as pushing myself?” he asks. “Because if not then I’m gonna get back to that.”

            “Read away,” Kalonia says, waving a hand. “But don’t drive yourself crazy. We’re all working on this together.”

            Which they’re not, actually, because they’re not letting him help. But Poe decides not to point that out. It’d probably just earn him another jab at his ego.

            “Understood, Major,” he says with mock formality, and sits back down on the floor with his datapad, BB-8 bumping his foot affectionately.

            [Iolo Arana reported excellent frozen cream desserts on Pamarthe,] BB-8 informs him as Kalonia leaves.

            “Did he? Good to know. Hey, do me a favor, okay? Remind me to talk to Iolo and Kare about what a report is.”

*

            Finn shows up about when Poe feels like throwing the datapad at the wall, which is good, because he’s pretty sure they don’t have the budget for more datapads at the moment. He’d heavily suggested to BB-8 that maybe Rey might want to chat, mostly to spare the droid his (and Kare’s) cursing, and for the past hour or so it’s just been Poe and the porgs and the endless stream of useless information that he can’t stop picking apart.

            “Hey,” Finn says, ducking in.

            “Hey, bud,” Poe says, setting the datapad down and trying to keep his eye from twitching. “What’s going on?”

            “Not much,” says Finn, looking a little bit hunted. His eyes dart toward the corridor, then back to Poe.

            Poe frowns. “All good?” he ventures.        

            Finn nods vigorously. “Yep. C’mon.”

            “What?”         

            “C’mon,” Finn repeats. “This is a rescue.”

            Poe stares for a beat, then breaks into a slow grin. “What, we gonna steal another ship?”

            “Sort of.” He marches right over and takes Poe’s hand and tugs him along, and Poe – Poe has questions, still, but Finn’s hand is warm and soft in his and distracting enough that he sort of can’t manage to string any words together as they make their way down the corridor.

            Finn’s led him straight to the cockpit. It’s empty except for Chewbacca sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, ignoring the both of them to gaze out at the whole lot of nothing that they’re drifting through.

            “It was Rey’s idea. Thought it might help,” Finn offers, letting go of Poe’s hand. “Just to get you out of there for a while. Apparently BeeBee Ate said you were...” He pauses, then says diplomatically, “...getting frustrated.”

            Poe doesn’t say anything for a moment, just takes it all in, eyeing the various switches and lights, reading what he can from them, lingering on the ones he doesn’t really recognize. And then his gaze fixes on the pilot’s seat.

            Han Solo’s seat.

            It’s like he’d forgotten where he was somehow. Like between the sickness and the – everything, everything that’s happened, he’d actually managed to _forget_ that he’s on the Millennium Falcon. The actual _Falcon_ , the ship he used to look for in the sky when he was little, the ship he used to pretend was his when he was a dumb kid playing at Rebel. When he still thought that was a game.  

            “You’re disobeying direct orders again,” he says finally, wrenching his eyes away to look at Finn instead. “From the General herself, is what I heard.”

            “I know,” Finn says, with a sigh. “I’ll probably be court-martialed. But hey, look, the pilot’s seat is open.”

             “Chewbacca’s got that covered,” Poe says. “Don’t need another pilot right now.” But he keeps eyeing the seat anyway.

            “Listen, man, if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that we can always use more pilots,” Finn answers. “At least...you know. I can.”

            “We should probably get you training,” Poe muses. “So you can be your own pilot.”

            “I don’t think –” Finn starts, but Chewie interrupts him with an impatient and frankly alarming sort of noise, gesturing between Poe and the chair. Poe doesn’t really speak Wookiee, but _sit down, you idiot_ seems like a reasonable enough interpretation.

            “Okay, okay,” he says. He goes over to collapse into the chair –maybe just a little more dramatically than warranted – and hesitates for a second. And then – how can he not? – he gives in. Lets his hands ghost over the controls, imagining how it’d feel to fly, to really _fly_ this thing. For a moment he’s got this incredible impulse to seize hold of the controls and just _go_.

            Poe stills his hands and stares down at them, biting his lip.

            “How’s it feel?” Finn asks.

            “Honestly?” Poe says, half-turning toward him. “It feels kinda like I’m five years old and I’m sick and you’re trying to distract me with a toy ship.”

            Finn gives a sheepish shrug. “Is it working?”

            Poe grins despite himself. “Yeah,” he admits. “It kinda is.”

            And Finn _beams_ right at him, which has never happened before. Not directly, not straight on like this. Poe can hardly take it, can barely understand the words coming from Finn’s mouth for a split-second there.

            “BeeBee thought you needed a break, so...”

            “So you defied the General, became a Resistance criminal...”

            “Yep.”

            “All for me,” Poe says.

            “All for you.”

            “Well, I’m flattered. I’ll give you a good reference at your trial.”

            “I don’t think that’s how trials work?”

            Poe shrugs. “Dunno. Never seen one before.” If their command wasn’t in pieces, he thinks idly, he might be on trial himself. Usually they do that sort of thing when you lead a mutiny.

            Of course, if their command wasn’t in pieces then there would’ve been no need to mutiny in the first place.

            Or if he’d listened to Holdo.

            Or if she’d told him anything. 

            He gazes down at the controls.

            ( _You’re impulsive_ , Holdo murmurs in his head, softer and more venomous than she’d actually said it. _Dangerous._ )

            Poe stands up so suddenly that he surprises himself, nearly trips right over the chair and elicits a loud complaint from Chewie. He turns back toward the corridor, avoiding the concerned look Finn’s giving him. “This was good, buddy,” he says, with forced cheer. “Thanks.”

            “Hey, Poe, come on, where are you going?”

            “Gotta talk to the General, had some ideas,” he says vaguely, although all he actually has is a recommendation for ice cream, and also he has no idea where she is, and – and now Finn’s in front of him, looking worried.

            His hand falls on Poe’s arm – warm, soft, anchoring him at the elbow – and Poe stops. Just stops, standing there with his back to the stars, Chewie, the Falcon’s controls, everything he ever dreamed about as a kid. He stops and he just _looks_ at Finn and he doesn’t know what his expression is like right now, doesn’t exactly know what he’s feeling right now except a choking tightness in his chest, rising swiftly toward his throat.

            “Hey,” says Finn again, gentler. “You all right?”

            “Hey,” Poe echoes, unsteadily. “I’m just...”

            But he doesn’t really know what he’s _just_. So he stops talking, hates himself for it, because Finn looks so lost.

            “Poe,” says Finn, and Poe’s never heard his own name spoken so careful and quiet. “You’ve – you’ve had a lot happen to you. You know?”

            Poe nods mutely.

            “Like. Anybody would be upset,” Finn goes on. He seems to grow more confident the longer Poe lets him talk, so that’s something to make a note of. “If just one of those things happened. And they _all_ happened to you.”

            Poe isn’t sure what things Finn’s talking about, exactly, but he just stands there, motionless, listening. He’s aware, at some level, of his own trembling hands, but that’s not important. Finn is trying very hard right now to help him, and that’s what really matters.

            “Lots of bad things happened,” he hears himself mumble. “To lots of people. I’m not special there.”

            Finn shakes his head, his fingers tightening on Poe’s arm. “Yeah, you are, you idiot,” he says, which Poe finds a bit unfair. “You’re the best pilot in the galaxy, for one—”

            “That doesn’t ma–”

            “You saved my _life_ , for another.”

            This complete and utter lie jolts Poe briefly back to himself. “ _You_ saved _mine_ ,” he argues, pointing an accusatory finger at Finn. “I was as good as dead till you got there.”

            “So was I, pretty much,” Finn retorts. “And _you’re_ the one who flew us out of there –”

            “ _You’re_ the one who shot those TIEs down–”

            “Poe Dameron. You triggered my kriffing ejector seat before your own.”

             “Oh, come _on_ ,” Poe says. “That’s just good manners.”

            “What? No it’s –” Finn stops himself, shakes his head. “You know what, whatever. I’m just saying...you don’t really need to be okay right now. You know? Like it’d be sort of crazy if you were okay right now. Nobody is. None of us are. Why should you be?”

            “Be _cause_ ,” Poe says, demonstrating the famous Commander Dameron eloquence and stubbornness all in one. The thing is that he’s not struggling to _find_ words, but to hold them back – to block off the raw honesty that’s threatening to spill out of him, that always has.

            “Because,” he tries again, “I’m a big part of the reason none of us are okay.”

            Finn snorts. “Yeah? You personally founded the First Order? That’s funny, they never told us that in the propaganda vids.”

            “ _No_ , but I’m the one who...”

            “Made the choice you thought was right, yeah.”

            “We talked about this.”

            “No, you just kept saying it was your fault and then you changed the subject.”

            “We _talked_ about this, Finn, we already –” Poe swears under his breath and turns away from Finn, away from his touch, back toward Chewie (who, thankfully for Poe’s remaining dignity, is steadfastly ignoring them) and the empty pilot’s chair. He stares hard at all the console lights until they start to blur together.

            “Look,” he says, a little calmer. “I don’t know what you want from me, buddy.”

            “I want you to not hate yourself,” Finn says, stepping up beside him, his hand falling on Poe’s shoulder. “For stuff you can’t help. Because I’m pretty sure we all have that stuff.”

            “I don’t – I’m okay.”                                                    

            “You know, you’re a pretty great pilot? But you’re the shittiest liar I’ve ever heard.”

            Poe laughs, a little breathless. “You’re not pulling your punches today, huh?”

            “Don’t need to. For the best pilot in the Resistance.”

            “All right,” Poe says. “All right.” He turns his head to look straight at Finn, to consider him. All of the impossible things that Finn is, continues to be. Maybe he looks a little too long, because now there’s puzzlement edging out the determination in Finn’s eyes, but he can’t help it. Can’t talk, either, for some reason, can’t seem to break the silence between them.

            “How you doing, Poe?” Finn asks at last, unbearably soft.

            Poe summons a brittle smile, halfway toward breaking the moment it touches his lips. When he finally lets the words out, they’re so quiet that they nearly disappear under the low thrum of the ship.

            “Not so good, buddy.”

            “Yeah,” Finn says. “I know.” He reaches out calmly, like it’s nothing at all, to take Poe’s hand again and squeeze it tight.

            And who taught him that, Poe wonders? Rey doesn’t seem the type. That’s gotta be just pure _Finn_ – that innate goodness in him that they somehow never managed to crush. No way the First Order encouraged comforting your fellow nameless soldiers.

            He has a sudden and vivid image of a bunch of stormtroopers holding hands, and lets out a laugh that’s just shy of a sob.

            Finn doesn’t seem bothered. His voice is low and gentle again. “What’s funny?”

            “Nothing,” Poe says. “Everything.”

             Finn nods, as though Poe is making any sense at all. “You wanna sit back down?”

            “No.”

            Finn considers him. “Okay,” he says. “You wanna walk?”

            Poe snorts. “To _where?_ ”

            “To Rey,” Finn says, like this is obvious. “And BeeBee Ate. And Rose, if she’s still up.” He pauses, gives Poe this intense and searching look that has him blinking back uncertainly.

            “You know,” Finn adds, “we weren’t really allowed to do...friendship...in the First Order.”

            Poe doesn’t know what to say to that. He realizes he’s leaning his weight toward Finn and shifts back. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That’s –” _Disgusting. Cruel. Kind of nauseating, to be honest._ “Wrong. It’s wrong. What they did to you.”

            “It’s okay,” Finn says. “Because it isn’t like that here, right?”

            “Of course not,” Poe says fiercely, horrified at the idea. “We all take care of each other here.”

            “Right, yeah,” Finn answers, smiling. “I like that about you.”

            Poe doesn’t know if he means _you_ as in the Resistance or as in...as in Poe.

            “You’re one of us now, Finn,” he says firmly. Just in case.

            “I know I am,” Finn replies, with that annoyed-amused huff again. “So let me take care of you.”

            Poe just gapes at him for a second, then closes his mouth and shakes his head. “Walked right into that one, huh.”

            “Yep.”

            Chewie, still staring straight ahead, makes a muffled noise that Poe can only interpret as a laugh.

            “Look, Finn, I...” Poe says, and then he just stops. There are too many words careening around his head too fast to catch, and none of them are what he means. He gives a full-body sigh, his shoulders rising high and then falling slowly. A porg feather slips off his shirt and flutters to the floor. And Finn holds tight to his hand all the while, keeping him anchored.

            He thinks, _There’s always something you can do_ , the words hanging thin but clear somewhere above all the noise.

            “So,” Finn says, quiet and calm. “We taking that walk?”

            Poe spares one more glance for the stars, for the console lights he can’t quite read, for the empty pilot’s seat and the vast stretch of unknown space ahead of them.

            Then he looks back at Finn, and Finn’s smiling, and so Poe tries it too. It feels okay.

            It feels a little like waking up, actually. Slow and sure.

            “Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go.”

 

 


End file.
